Giant panda numbers surge

It's good news for giant pandas: the number of the endangered animals living in the wild has surged, according to Chinese news agency Xinhua.

A 2003 survey by China's State Forestry Administration (SFA) found there were 1596 giant pandas living in the wild. Another survey in 2013 counted 1864 pandas, an increase of 16.8 percent.

The number of pandas in captivity jumped 128.7 percent to 375, according to the SFA.

Panda habitats — an area spread across six mountain ranges, mostly in the south-west of Sichuan province — also expanded by 11.8 percent to 2.58 million hectares.

Robust conservation efforts were credited with the increase in panda numbers, but the SFA cautioned that 223 of the wild pandas living in isolated populations are still "at extreme high risk of extinction".

"The rise in the population of wild giant pandas is a ... testament to the commitment made by the Chinese government for the last 30-plus years to wild panda conservation," said Ginette Hemley, Senior Vice President of Wildlife Conservation at the World Wildlife Fund, which uses the giant panda as its logo.

Pandas are a difficult species to save: they're reluctant to breed, they only eat slow-growing bamboo and the cost of their conservation is extraordinarily high, moaned Timothy Lavin in his 2013 essay Why I Hate Pandas And You Should Too.

But they're one of many species that have been pulled back from the brink of extinction by intensive conservation efforts:

In January 2015, researchers on the Galapagos island of Pinzón reported seeing giant tortoise hatchlings — the first time baby tortoises had been seen there for the first time more than 100 years.

The population boost followed decades of hard work to cull the islands' populations of rats, which were introduced by seafarers in the 18th century and feasted on tortoise eggs.

"This new bunch of 'little guys' is one of the important results of the rat eradication campaign, tangible proof that with dedication, hard work, support, and heart, conservation efforts can effect positive change," wrote Professor Jamie Gibbs, one of the researchers who observed the first batch of tortoise hatchlings in December 2014.

There are at least 57 cats in Russia's Land of the Leopard National Park, an increase from the 30 counted in 2007, while up to 12 more leopards may be living in nearby areas of China.

"There's still a lot of work to be done in order to secure a safe future for the Amur leopard, but these numbers demonstrate that things are moving in the right direction,” said Dr. Barney Long, Director of Species Conservation for WWF-US.

Poachers, habitat loss and conflict with local villagers drove India's tiger population to slump to 1411 in 2006, reports the Guardian. But a population survey in 2014 identified a huge leap in tiger numbers, up to 2226.

The Indian government claims the increase is down to heavily policed tiger reserves to repel poaching, which is fuelled by demand for tiger parts in traditional Asian medicine.

Grey whales, which have one of the longest annual migrations of any species, largely kick-started the whale conservation movement. A population of grey whales in the eastern north Pacific Ocean was hunted to the edge of extinction until the species was given full protection by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in 1947. That eastern north Pacific population has now numbers between 19,000 and 23,000.

Sadly, two other populations of grey whales haven't fared as well. A population in the western north Pacific is down to as few as 130 individuals, while a population in the north Atlantic has been extinct since the 18th century.

Several subspecies of rhinoceros are critically endangered, but efforts to save the southern white rhinoceros have been very successful. While there were as few as 50 of them at the start of the 20th century, there's now more of them than all the other kinds of rhino combined.

This strange-looking critter is still critically endangered — but its future isn't as dark as it once looked. The Lord Howe Island stick insect was driven to extinction by the introduction of rats in the early 20th century, but in 2001 a tiny population of the creepy-crawlies were rediscovered on a remote volcanic outcrop.